Notes

The Tesselaarsdal period is considered formative in Peter Clarke’s artistic development with his visits starting in 1949 when he still worked in the docks in Simon's Town. Clarke would return in the December holidays of 1950 & 1951 and from 1956 to 1960 he continued to visit Tesselaarsdal annually, often on extended stays of up to three months. It was during this period around 1957 that he decided to give up his job in the docks and dedicate his life to art.

In Clarke’s approach to the rural farmland landscapes one notices “a distinctly modernist agenda” with the pastoral views from Tesselaarsdal “representing the new challenges presented by the less formal qualities of a rural landscape in contrast to the more complex perspectives of man-made urban views with their demanding geometry”. ¹

At the same time his work began to be celebrated for the “powerful graphic sensibility” evident in his paintings, which he would go on to explore over the next three years in an extensive variety printmaking processes which culminated in his time at Michaelis School of Fine Art with lecturer Katrine Harries from October to November, 1961. ²

The present lot, executed towards the end of 1959, shows Clarke experimenting with a style reminiscent of Cézanne and the “bold contours and tipped up planes” of the Post-Impressionist landscapes and quite unlike the “Impressionistic naturalism of his earlier studies”. ³ Instead, Clarke chooses to play with distance, and strip the details down to their bare essentials.

Using pointillist brushwork to give his planes texture, the cows are anchored in the fields by a thin, delicately painted grey shadow. His clouds which appear to float away, reach whimsically across a monumental sky, and balance the pictorial plane as the hill slopes off to the left.      

1. Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin. (2014) Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke, Johannesburg, Standard Bank. Page 58.
2. Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin. (2014) Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke, Johannesburg, Standard Bank. Page 72.
3. ibid., Page 58 – 60.

Provenance